At least on my set HDR default settings make shadow details glow blue. If there is a shot of someone in the dark with black curly hair the hair looks like it's covered with blue glow in the dark paint. I don't know why or how, but lowering Blue to -1 at 127 code make the glow in the dark effect disappear

To be honest, I've been calibrating for a couple of years and my E6 near black detail was driving me crazy until I read Chadb's suggestions to manually set 0% black in Calman which causes the software to adjust the gamma curve so that the set comes out of black faster. Chad likes 1 or 2 FL, I prefer 0.0005 cd/m2 (nits) but this IS something that you can experiment with to see how it works. If you had Calman or equivalent software, you can actually see how much just a very small rise in setting 0% black level over 0 makes to the gamma curve. Initially I was manually setting 0% black to 0 because I felt that when the OLED is displaying black, it's off right? Well that may be the case but doing that makes near black detail not so good.

So, if I understand you, your set is purposely calibrated so that when it displays "reference black" or "0% black," it actually emits a tiny bit of light in order to make content just above 0% black, e.g. 0.5% black, more noticeable.

I don't own any calibrating equipment but I feel like that's what my panel does with brightness at 52. If I look through a toilet paper roll pressed against column 16 on the flashing black level test pattern (or on the typical letterbox bar in a movie), I can see just a bit of glow but I can't really notice it when seated back from the TV. But if the screen goes completely 0% black, then my eyes can see that the screen is barely glowing, even seated several feet away.

So, if I understand you, your set is purposely calibrated so that when it displays "reference black" or "0% black," it actually emits a tiny bit of light in order to make content just above 0% black, e.g. 0.5% black, more noticeable.

I don't own any calibrating equipment but I feel like that's what my panel does with brightness at 52. If I look through a toilet paper roll pressed against column 16 on the flashing black level test pattern (or on the typical letterbox bar in a movie), I can see just a bit of glow but I can't really notice it when seated back from the TV. But if the screen goes completely 0% black, then my eyes can see that the screen is barely glowing, even seated several feet away.

>> So, if I understand you, your set is purposely calibrated so that when it displays "reference black" or "0% black," it actually emits a tiny bit of light in order to make content just above 0% black, e.g. 0.5% black, more noticeable.
<<<
No, First I set the brightness with the Pluge pattern and then check to see if when I display a 0% black pattern, there is no visible light that I can detect coming from the screen. Then I do the 2 pt and then check again because if you have to raise any of the RGB to balance the Low, it can in effect raise the brightness in the lower IRE's. If I can see light being emitted with a 0% black pattern, then I lower the brightness one click and it usually goes away, if I see it at all. Then I do the 21 pt grayscale and at the end, I check the brightness again. Now, i'm calibrating in a totally dark room and giving my eyes a chance to adapt to the darkness BUT, i'm not going crazy putting my eyes against the screen or using my meter or a magnifying glass to see if there is any extremely faint amount of light because you would never be able to detect this at normal viewing distance. As far as manually setting the black level a slight bit higher than 0 in Calman, the software I use, this causes the gamma calculation in the software to change so that the curve that you calibrate to, moves the set out of black a little bit quicker so you get more near black detail. As discussed there is no hard and fast setting to use. You really need to experiment with different values to see what looks good with the main content that you normally watch. In reality, you are calibrating to a curve that is slightly lower than 2.4 so it's essentially like raising the luminance in the lower ire's but instead of raising the luminance control, you are calibrating the RGB to the gamma curve. If you look at Buzz's curves at the beginning of this forum, it's basically the same. You are calibrating to a calculated gamma curve vs just randomly raising the luminance controls. The higher you set the 0% black level in the software, the faster the set will come out of black.

>> As far as manually setting the black level a slight bit higher than 0 in Calman, the software I use, this causes the gamma calculation in the software to change so that the curve that you calibrate to, moves the set out of black a little bit quicker so you get more near black detail.

Gotcha. This, creating a customized gamma curve that moves out of black more quickly, is something I would like and frankly the only reason why I would even care to get my set calibrated.

>> So, if I understand you, your set is purposely calibrated so that when it displays "reference black" or "0% black," it actually emits a tiny bit of light in order to make content just above 0% black, e.g. 0.5% black, more noticeable.
<<<
No, First I set the brightness with the Pluge pattern and then check to see if when I display a 0% black pattern, there is no visible light that I can detect coming from the screen. Then I do the 2 pt and then check again because if you have to raise any of the RGB to balance the Low, it can in effect raise the brightness in the lower IRE's. If I can see light being emitted with a 0% black pattern, then I lower the brightness one click and it usually goes away, if I see it at all. Then I do the 21 pt grayscale and at the end, I check the brightness again. Now, i'm calibrating in a totally dark room and giving my eyes a chance to adapt to the darkness BUT, i'm not going crazy putting my eyes against the screen or using my meter or a magnifying glass to see if there is any extremely faint amount of light because you would never be able to detect this at normal viewing distance. As far as manually setting the black level a slight bit higher than 0 in Calman, the software I use, this causes the gamma calculation in the software to change so that the curve that you calibrate to, moves the set out of black a little bit quicker so you get more near black detail. As discussed there is no hard and fast setting to use. You really need to experiment with different values to see what looks good with the main content that you normally watch. In reality, you are calibrating to a curve that is slightly lower than 2.4 so it's essentially like raising the luminance in the lower ire's but instead of raising the luminance control, you are calibrating the RGB to the gamma curve. If you look at Buzz's curves at the beginning of this forum, it's basically the same. You are calibrating to a calculated gamma curve vs just randomly raising the luminance controls. The higher you set the 0% black level in the software, the faster the set will come out of black.

I hope this helps.

Many times when a movie cuts before jumping to the next scene the screen is not as black as the 2 horizontal bars located at each end of the picture.
Is that a sign that my brightness is too high or as long as the 2 bars are pure black I should blame the grey- ish black on the movie?

Many times when a movie cuts before jumping to the next scene the screen is not as black as the 2 horizontal bars located at each end of the picture.
Is that a sign that my brightness is too high or as long as the 2 bars are pure black I should blame the grey- ish black on the movie?

You need to display a full black image to see if brightness is correct. Use the youtube app and display 10 hours of HD black screen. In a dark room, with the light off, play that video. Let your eyes adjust for about a minute or two. If there is a glow, lower brightness until screen is black.

It's hard to tell with a movie if the bars are black if anything is being displayed between the bars. Your irises will contract and so they will appear to be black.

With that said, there are some movies that have elevated blacks, and it's the movie and not the tv. Perfect example of that is Star Trek Beyond. A lot of horribly elevated black scenes. It's so poorly mastered that even the UHD version is bad. In fact, on the UHD version, I see flickering in some of the near black scenes.

You need to display a full black image to see if brightness is correct. Use the youtube app and display 10 hours of HD black screen. In a dark room, with the light off, play that video. Let your eyes adjust for about a minute or two. If there is a glow, lower brightness until screen is black.

It's hard to tell with a movie if the bars are black if anything is being displayed between the bars. Your irises will contract and so they will appear to be black.

With that said, there are some movies that have elevated blacks, and it's the movie and not the tv. Perfect example of that is Star Trek Beyond. A lot of horribly elevated black scenes. It's so poorly mastered that even the UHD version is bad. In fact, on the UHD version, I see flickering in some of the near black scenes.

When I use brightness patterns the bars in a movie are as black as they get. But the blacks within the movie are greyish and never match the depth of the two black bars. Should I lower brightness even more until the whole screen is black including bars and everything in between?

When I use brightness patterns the bars in a movie are as black as they get. But the blacks within the movie are greyish and never match the depth of the two black bars. Should I lower brightness even more until the whole screen is black including bars and everything in between?

Is it possible for the black levels on these sets to actually lower (basically the opposite of what some of the Panasonic plasmas were doing)? I just noticed some extremely odd behaviour from mine, unless my vision just suddenly changed over the last few weeks. When I got the set in July, I ended up settling on:

ISF Dark
OLED 40
Contrast 97
Brightness 54
Warm 2
Gamma BT.1886

This is in a completely dark room with it hooked up to a PC using RGB Full. I checked it again later with the ISF stars patterns as well as the gamma clip from this thread. Everything lined up. I even rechecked a few weeks ago.

While watching a show last night that had quite a lot of black and near black scenes, with people either being in the shadows or having black leather on, it just looked wrong. It seemed like I was getting a lot of black crushing. When they would be outside in direct sunlight, it looked better, but not quite natural. For the hell of it, I decided to switch over to gamma 2.2. The screen got "brighter", but it wasn't quite washed out. Everything looked a lot better for some reason, and it goes against my previous tests as well as thoughts on the media I had been previously viewing all of this time.

Just now, I went back and tested with the slides again with BT.1886. It wasn't correct. Gamma was off as was the brightness. I double checked to make sure none of the luminance levels were altered from the default (since I did toy around with near black levels briefly, but wasn't satisfied, so I set it back to 0). Putting it back to gamma 2.2 as well as adjusting the brightness to 53 had everything pass again, which includes the flashing black bars, that I previously gave up on trying to use with this setup. 17+ was blinking.

The only things that are different between when I got the set and now would be the two or three firmware updates, a driver update for my graphics card as well as playing some games in HDR. I don't know if there's any possible correlation here either, but Resident Evil 7 on PC has an HDR mode, but it's completely ****ed up. If you shut it off, it looks like it's gamma blasting the screen and turning the in game brightness all to the lowest level is like you have it near the maximum (I've been able to play the game with another monitor without this problem happening). If the B6 starts out in HDR mode (which the game originally forced this TV into automatically without any choice until it was patched), the non HDR mode is completely off brightness wise. You have to turn the TV's brightness down by 6-8 over where you originally had it for it to look even remotely right.

Maybe the video card drivers changed something, but I've never heard of this happening. All I know is that the settings that the TV was calibrated to for almost seven months are now no longer accurate.

When I use brightness patterns the bars in a movie are as black as they get. But the blacks within the movie are greyish and never match the depth of the two black bars. Should I lower brightness even more until the whole screen is black including bars and everything in between?

Some movies are just going to be garbage with regards to the blacks. Most movies dont have perfect blacks. Thats why I never try an focus on seeing bar 17 flashing. That is 1/2% black. When it comes to mastering, 1/2% to 1% was probably good enough, since no tv prior to OLED could get that low. So your choice is to crush a little, or to see the detail, and also see the elevated blacks in the movie itself. If I can see bar 18 flashing and not 17, in a dark room from my seated position, thats good enough for me.

Some movies are just going to be garbage with regards to the blacks. Most movies dont have perfect blacks. Thats why I never try an focus on seeing bar 17 flashing. That is 1/2% black. When it comes to mastering, 1/2% to 1% was probably good enough, since no tv prior to OLED could get that low. So your choice is to crush a little, or to see the detail, and also see the elevated blacks in the movie itself. If I can see bar 18 flashing and not 17, in a dark room from my seated position, thats good enough for me.

Lucky you seeing bar 18, on my set I can see bar 23-25 with brightness set at 51 any higher and my black is not black anymore. I do have some slight crush and I do have plenty of details without adjusting 5% luminance.

Lucky you seeing bar 18, on my set I can see bar 23-25 with brightness set at 51 any higher and my black is not black anymore. I do have some slight crush and I do have plenty of details without adjusting 5% luminance.

There has to be something wrong with your tv. In a totally dark room, I can see bar 18 flashing from my seated position. Now if there is a light on, or during the day, I can't see 18. Do you have the slides? If you can see the 1% full screen slide in a dark room, then that is level 18, which means at worst you are only crushing below 1%.

There has to be something wrong with your tv. In a totally dark room, I can see bar 18 flashing from my seated position. Now if there is a light on, or during the day, I can't see 18. Do you have the slides? If you can see the 1% full screen slide in a dark room, then that is level 18, which means at worst you are only crushing below 1%.

Bluray.
With movies in 16:9 it is not as distracting but when they are in wide screen (whatever format it is called) the two solid black bars make the greyish black images stick out like a sore thumb

Sometimes the bluray player can raise the black level which is why some have controls in the player to make adjustments. My suggestion is as follows:
If all discs do the same thing, and you don't see this with streaming or any other source, go into the menu's of the player and see if you can make any adjustments.

The intro of Batman vs Superman is a good example unless the director intentionally wanted the black background to look like we are watching a LED tv

Earlier in this thread, someone said that it's not supposed to be a solid black. You should clearly see the intro logo background separate from the black bars. Going off of my own testing with other material and adjustments, it is supposed to be somewhere close to 5% black, maybe slightly above or below.

Earlier in this thread, someone said that it's not supposed to be a solid black. You should clearly see the intro logo background separate from the black bars. Going off of my own testing with other material and adjustments, it is supposed to be somewhere close to 5% black, maybe slightly above or below.

This is good to know. I was driving myself crazy trying to get the opening scene to match the black bars. Now that I know it's not supposed to I feel much better as I didn't like how it darkened an already dark movie...

Sometimes the bluray player can raise the black level which is why some have controls in the player to make adjustments. My suggestion is as follows:
If all discs do the same thing, and you don't see this with streaming or any other source, go into the menu's of the player and see if you can make any adjustments.

If one has the slides on DVD or USB, use the player to test those slides. Most blu ray players have usb ports, so that is the quickest way to test. Use the player to test a 0% slide. If it glows, then you need to either adjust brightness on tv or player. However, like he said, the black bars are black, so the player is handling blacks correctly.

Sometimes the bluray player can raise the black level which is why some have controls in the player to make adjustments. My suggestion is as follows:
If all discs do the same thing, and you don't see this with streaming or any other source, go into the menu's of the player and see if you can make any adjustments.

My player is set to where everything is at 0 as to not interfere with tv settings. I get perfect black scene cuts on Netflix but on blurays oftentimes I don't.
To me the selling point of this TV was how it turns black in between scenes to where you sometimes need to second guess whether the tv is still in or not. Take that away and you have just another LED tv

Earlier in this thread, someone said that it's not supposed to be a solid black. You should clearly see the intro logo background separate from the black bars. Going off of my own testing with other material and adjustments, it is supposed to be somewhere close to 5% black, maybe slightly above or below.

What about later on in the movie when Mr Wayne has that vision of him being jacked by Superman and his minions? There are two other screen cuts there when he falls asleep and wakes up and when he comes back to consciousness...same thing: bars are black but everything in between is not

If one has the slides on DVD or USB, use the player to test those slides. Most blu ray players have usb ports, so that is the quickest way to test. Use the player to test a 0% slide. If it glows, then you need to either adjust brightness on tv or player. However, like he said, the black bars are black, so the player is handling blacks correctly.

Bars are as black as it gets. Actually when the movie is in 16:9 this issue is not visible because it is those black bars in wide screen format that let me know when picture is not fully black.
The only movie that gives me black equal to the bars so far has been Pacific Rim

Bars are as black as it gets. Actually when the movie is in 16:9 this issue is not visible because it is those black bars in wide screen format that let me know when picture is not fully black.
The only movie that gives me black equal to the bars so far has been Pacific Rim

Most films will not have perfect blacks. Lucy is one that does. 2001 Space Odyssey was considered "reference" when it came out on blu ray. OLED exposed that myth. The space scenes are not black. Gravity does look amazing. The space scenes are flawless.

So, why are you assuming it's supposed to be entirely black? Watch the same scene on any random LCD/LED monitor and you can tell the bars are not supposed to match, even though on those comparatively crappy screens it's actually harder to see the bars compared to the background, you can still tell they aren't meant to match.

If you want to see a movie that does have a perfect black background in the intro, watch the beginning of Casino Royale. Hell, watch any of the intros of the Daniel Craig Bond movies for that matter.

I have my OLED light set to 40. For black artifacts though, if it gets really bad, I just end up turning down the brightness by one for that particular show. Crushed blacks are easier to deal with than a freaking blizzard of darkness.

Great. At least I know it is not my set reproducing elevated blacks.
And yes I made sure Black Level is on Low for movies.
Thanks!

Maybe I just misread your initial post. Are you able to see bar 18 or were you just commenting that the other person was lucky being able to see it? If you are only seeing 23-25, there's either something way off with the settings of your TV compared to your viewing environment, or your TV is simply defective.

Maybe I just misread your initial post. Are you able to see bar 18 or were you just commenting that the other person was lucky being able to see it? If you are only seeing 23-25, there's either something way off with the settings of your TV compared to your viewing environment, or your TV is simply defective.

I don't see bar 18 with brightness at 51, to see it I need brightness 54, but then my blacks are gray. but I have tested my VT60 and B6 side by side and I am not losing that much details in the dark with brightness 51, a little crush it is but nothing major.so either mine is defective or it is just good out of the box.i am not only one that can't see bar 18, many people both in the USA and UK-Norway can't see bar 18 with brightness 51, but have plenty of shadow details anyway.

No panels are alike, and with LG this is so very true.

Some Pro calibrators have said that you can't use brightness pattern on Oled, you need a meter, In my case that is true.

I don't see bar 18 with brightness at 51, to see it I need brightness 54, but then my blacks are gray. but I have tested my VT60 and B6 side by side and I am not losing that much details in the dark with brightness 51, a little crush it is but nothing major.so either mine is defective or it is just good out of the box.i am not only one that can't see bar 18, many people both in the USA and UK-Norway can't see bar 18 with brightness 51, but have plenty of shadow details anyway.

No panels are alike, and with LG this is so very true.

Some Pro calibrators have said that you can't use brightness pattern on Oled, you need a meter, In my case that is true.

I assume this is with gamma 1886? I see you have the B model. Perhaps that issue occurs more with the B model.